Edward MendelsonCorel WordPerfect Office X5 Standard EditionFor WordPerfect's many government and legal clients, WordPerfect Office X5 is the best upgrade in years; but for home and SOHO users, it's not an essential upgrade from previous versions.

For WordPerfect's many government and legal clients, WordPerfect Office X5 is the best upgrade in years; but for home and SOHO users, it's not an essential upgrade from previous versions.

Corel WordPerfect Office X5 is the only PC-based office application suite that doesn't try to mimic Microsoft Office. It provides a true alternative to Office, not a watered-down imitation, and that's exactly why it survives in a Microsoft-centric universe. Open-source, freeware application suites like OpenOffice.org (Free, ) try to act as much as possible like pre-Ribbon-Interface versions of Microsoft Office, but the main reasons for using such programs are that they cost nothing and don't keep your data in proprietary formats. WordPerfect Office is a commercial application that's still worth paying for becausedespite its many limits and inconveniencesthe WordPerfect word processor gives the kind of predictable, fine-tuned control over the format and appearance of documents that's almost impossible to achieve in Microsoft Word.

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Few individual users and fewer companies are ever going to switch away from a world-standard like Officeespecially in its new and gleamingly usable Office 2010 releaseand move instead to an outlier like WordPerfect. But thousand of government and legal offices have been using WordPerfect for decades, and they don't see any reason to give up its very real benefits. The latest version of Corel's WordPerfect suite offers the familiar interface that government and legal communities require, plus a few well-chosen new features that mostly match long-established features in Microsoft Office.

New Features In WordPerfect Office X5
For example, the suite now works smoothly with SharePoint servers, providing revision-tracking and version-comparison features, plus the ability to use a Web browser to view documents on the server (WordPerfect can now import data from Web services). The suite also finally gets a smooth-running, integrated "Reference Center" help system that provides clearer and better-organized help than Microsoft's Web-based grab-bag.

The Standard version of the suite ($249.99; $159.99 upgrade), which I tested under Windows XP and Windows 7, contains the familiar three core applications: WordPerfect X5 as its word-processor, Quattro Pro X5 as its spreadsheet, Presentations X5 as a combined graphics editor and presentations creator. Also included are: WordPerfect Lightning, a minimal digital notebook that doesn't try to match Microsoft's sleek, high-tech OneNote; a licensed version of Nuance PaperPort SE 12, a highly capable application for scanning and managing documents; and a minimally-tweaked version of Mozilla's Thunderbird (Free, ) e-mail client, with the Thunderbird Lightning calendar add-in pre-installed. Thunderbird replaces the proprietary e-mail clients in earlier versions, which won't be missed. A Home/Student version (SRP $99.99, no upgrade price) omits PaperPort and SharePoint support. A Professional version (SRP $399.99, upgrade $259.99) adds the Paradox database and a software developer's kit.

WordPerfect Office X5 vs. Microsoft Office
Quattro Pro and Presentations are both adequate and efficient apps, closely comparable to Excel and PowerPoint as they existed circa 2001. In contrast, the unique features and manageability of the WordPerfect word processor provide a compelling reason to choose WordPerfect Office over Microsoft Office. It may not be as powerful as Word, but it's a lot more manageable and predictable. WordPerfect outclasses Word in its ability to manage and format long and multi-chapter documents. It also includes a few features that don't have a comparable counterpart in Word. One that I find particularly useful is WordPerfect's ability to store printer settings with a document, which means that I can set WordPerfect documents to automatically print on both sides of the page. Microsoft Office, in contrast, makes you select duplex printing from the options in the Print dialog every time you print a document on both sides.

Unlike Word, WordPerfect never leaves you in doubt about why a block of text is formatted the way it is, or leaves you baffled when you delete a word at the end of a paragraph, and the whole paragraph changes its format. In WordPerfect, you merely open the Reveal Codes window at the foot of the screen, and the formatting code is easily visible. Double-click on a code to modify formatting; drag a code out of the window to delete the code and remove the formatting that the code applies.

The latest WordPerfect version can both open and save in Microsoft Word 2007 format; the previous version could open but not save in Word 2007 format. (Quattro Pro and Presentations can also import and export in Office 2007 formats.) Also, unlike Office, WordPerfect can import PDF files and convert them into editable documents. This feature was powerful and effective when I used it with uncomplicated PDF files. However, it refused to open some PDF files I had tweaked in Adobe Acrobat by changing some text, and it ignored the images embedded in other PDF files. Still, it's a lot more convenient than buying a converter program or add-in as you need to do with Office. Another feature that legal and government users will like is WordPerfect's built-in redaction tool for permanently blanking-out sensitive text. Microsoft Word, by contrast, provides an optional (and not officially supported) downloadable add-in to supply the same feature.

WordPerfect's new ability to download data from a Web server is a feature that Microsoft has had for years in Excel, but WordPerfect one-ups Microsoft by letting users import data directly into a WordPerfect table through a lucid wizard-style interface. WordPerfect's tables have been more flexible and powerful than Word's for decades, ever since WordPerfect folded its once-separate spreadsheet program directly into the word processor. Of course, Microsoft Word can embed Excel tables, but WordPerfect's built-in tables are more powerful and more portableNext: WordPerfect Office X5's Shortcomings

Corel WordPerfect Office X5 Sta...

Corel WordPerfect Office X5 Standard Edition

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